ases.

There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole
dictionary is scarce able to contain them, for there is hardly a pond, a
sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece but the ancient name of it is
become a term of art in poetry. By this means small poets have such a
stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryads, hamadryads, Aonides,
fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all, and such a
world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all
the new inventions and thorough reformations that can happen between
this and Plato's great year.

When he writes he never proposes any scope or purpose to himself, but
gives his genius all freedom; for as he that rides abroad for his
pleasure can hardly be out of his way, so he that writes for his
pleasure can seldom be beside his subject. It is an ungrateful thing to
a noble wit to be confined to anything. To what purpose did the ancients
feign Pegasus to have wings if he must be confined to the road and
stages like a pack-horse, or be forced to be obedient to hedges and
ditches? Therefore he has no respect to decorum and propriety of
circumstance, for the regard of persons, times, and places is a
restraint too servile to be imposed upon poetical license, like him that
made Plato confess Juvenal to be a philosopher, or Persius, that calls
the Athenians Quirites.

For metaphors, he uses to choose the hardest and most far-set that he
can light upon. These are the jewels of eloquence, and therefore the
harder they are the more precious they must be.

He'll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the
tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see
through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged
up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, "that the
weakest does not always go to the wall;" for 'tis well known the lines
are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any
that have been written in our language. He seldom makes a conscience of
his rhymes, but will often take the liberty to make "preach" rhyme with
"cheat," "vote" with "rogue," and "committee-man" with "hang."

He'll make one word of as many joints as the tin-pudding that a juggler
pulls out of his throat and chops in again. What think you of
_glud-fum-flam-hasta-minantes?_ Some of the old Latin poets bragged that
their verses were tougher than brass and harder than marble; w